Have Californians Kept Up in the 1990s?

Using data on U.S. income between 1989 to 1998, economic analysts foundthat the middle-income California family lost ground economically duringthe 1990s while those families in other states progressed. Daly andother analysts largely blame the diminished economic standing ofCalifornia's mid- and lower-income families on the state's devastatingrecession in the early 1990s and the late arrival of the nationaleconomic boom in the state. In addition, a long-term cause of economicinequality is California's comparatively large pool of young and poorlyeducated workers, many of them immigrants. The study determined thatmedian family income actually fell 4% in California from 1989 to 1998,while in the other 49 states it climbed 8%.